Exalted (32 page)

When
I thought about it a little later, I figured I must have been seriously freaking
out, because as I stared down at him, the world seemed to stretch and rip—a
kaleidoscope twisting in furious fingers. The air crackled like a huge branch
snapping, and the pressure squeezed my eardrums, announcing the End of both our
lives and the Beginning of something unimaginably new.

The
really awful thing is: all I could think about was
Twilight
.

I’d
become book critic enough to know the story’s flaws, but when I’d gotten the
series for Christmas in the seventh grade, I’d liked the vampire-werewolf
fantasy better than I had ever admitted to my friends (even S.K., who was
herself a fanatic). Which meant animals that occasionally turned human seemed
real enough to me.

Staring
down at the felled boy, my mind spun like a Ferris wheel. Had I accidentally
hit Aiden instead of Ashlyn? Were my mule deer really mule guys and mule girls?

A
violent breeze swept through the woods, shaking the bridge, and reality
returned in a burst of sickening fright.

“Holy
freaking baktag! Holy
shit
!”

I’d
shot a
person
!

My legs
jolted into motion before I was ready; I bumped into the bridge’s rope
handrails and shrieked, then shot off toward the stairs, practically fell down
them.

“Hey!”
I sprinted to him, dropping to the damp sand. “HEY! Are you okay?!”

I
shook his shoulder. His head lolled back, bright copper curls pressed into the
sand. His eyes were shut, his chiseled lips parted.

“Oh,
God
. Can you hear me? Please talk to
me!”

I
rocked back, cradling my head. Could a dart calibrated for a small fawn kill a
guy my age? I didn’t know. I didn’t know much about the dart gun. I wasn’t even
supposed to be using it!

My
breath came in frantic tugs, like I was breathing for him and me. I looked down
at him again and felt the ground below me tilt.

The
boy’s curls looked afire against the dull wool of his tux. I followed the crisp
lines of fabric down to his abs, where—
oh,
God
—the dart’s tail stuck out of a swatch of inky fabric.

My
hand hovered over it.

“Oh,
God. Oh God.”

What
if he never woke up? Should I be calling 9-1-1? I fumbled in my pants pocket
for my phone— But wait! I didn’t have service here!

Jerky
like a wind-up doll, I leaned over his body and splayed my palm across his
cheek. It was creamy—not pale or flushed—and to me it looked unnaturally
perfect. He didn’t have a single blemish. Not even a freckle. I wiggled my
fingers, tap-tapping on his cheek below his eye. “Hey… c’mon. Talk to me!”

My
hands were shaking too much to check his pulse at the wrist, but I was able to
press my fingers against his jugular, digging in to find the heartbeat at his
throat.

Slow
but steady.

“Okay.”
I huffed. “Okay.” I sucked air through my nose, let it out slowly through my
mouth. A shrink had taught me this. Dr. Sam, the guy my mom sent me to after
Dad died and I had my— well, my issues. “Okay.”

I
needed to practice what Dr. Sam had called positive projection.

This guy will wake up soon. This guy will wake
up soon. And when he does he will be fine. When he does he will be fine.

His
neck was warm and firm, with a muscular quality that reminded me a little of an
animal. The dart was only supposed to put a mule deer out for a few minutes, so
it couldn’t take much longer for a human.
Could
it?

No, Milo. Of course it can’t.

The
mental tricks did their job. I was able to calm down enough to think, and the
first thing I thought was that I needed to examine him more closely. I stared
down at him, noticing minute things, like the poet-or-surfer curliness of his
brilliant, bronzy hair. How thick and soft it looked, like a thousand loosely
curving ocean waves. His shoulders seemed unusually wide, but maybe that was
the tux.

Wait—

Why
the heck was he wearing a
tuxedo
? I glanced around, half expecting
Bond-like reinforcements, but all I saw were leaves and branches. Our land was
isolated. Fenced. So where on Earth had he come from?

I
looked back at his face: his parted lips, the sharp line of his jaw, the gentle
plane of his nose, the way his lashes fanned against his cheek.
 

A
pristine white hanky poked out of his breast pocket, folded so harshly it
looked fake. My gaze swept down his long legs before I realized I was—oh,
no—gawking, and forced my attention back up to his face.

Coloring:
good. Eyelids: unmoving. Mouth: not frothing or bleeding or bruised. In the
last three years, I’d become an expert on vital signs, and my throat flattened
a sob as I realized how familiar this routine felt.

I
grabbed his hand and squeezed my eyes shut.
He’s
not dead, Milo.
I’d felt his pulse. Now I simply had to wake him up.

Pressing
his warm hand between both of mine, I leaned down and spoke loudly near his
ear. “Okay, now. It’s time to GET UP.”

I
held my breath, gritted my teeth, and willed his eyes to open.

And
they did. No fluttering lashes or painful squints or groans. He simply opened
his eyes and blinked, just like an owl.

His
eyes were deep brown. Wide and slightly glazed, they held mine like a magnet.
Then he rolled onto his back, kicked out one long leg, and grimaced as he
pulled the dart from his chest. He held it up into the sunlight.

Words
gushed out of my mouth. “I’m sorry! Are you
okay
?
I’m sooo sorry. I was trying to shoot a deer and you just—” what? He’d just
appeared
.

Except—okay—that
clearly wasn’t what actually happened.

The
boy’s rust-smudge brows clenched.

“I
shot you!” I blurted. “That’s a dart!”

He
turned the tiny pink dart over in his hand. His mouth tightened, and I felt
sure he was going to say something along the lines of,
My father the Congressman will be sure you’re prosecuted to the fullest
extent of the law.

Instead,
the corners of his mouth curved slowly. He sat up fully, leaning back on one
arm, and in a rich, black-coffee kind of voice, he said, “You shot me?”

He
was grinning and, a second later, laughing. His shoulders shook, his head
lolled back. The sound of it was uproarious. Wonderful. As was his dark gaze,
affixed to mine. “You
shot
me?” The
words puffed out on hoots of laughter. “And you were aiming for a deer?”

He
laughed so long I felt my cheeks color.

“You
might consider wearing orange in the woods,” I advised, wiping my hair back.
“Anything with some color. Your hair’s not
that
red, and black and white don’t really say ‘I’m human.’”

“What
do they say?” His grinning face was lit up like a Christmas tree.

“I
don’t know…” Against my will, I felt my own lips twitch. I glanced over his
tux. “Nick Carraway?”

He
considered that for a second. “
The
Great Gatsby
?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s
human. Or would be if he was real.” Still smiling that brilliant smile, he
raked a hand back through his hair, trailing down over his face and over his
jacket. Slowly, the smile faded. He looked down at himself for so long I forgot
to breathe.

“Um…
Hey,” I said. “Are you okay?”

He
looked at me like he’d forgotten I was there. His mouth was pinched tight now,
his brown eyes flat.

“Do
you feel bad?” I asked; my voice quivered.
      

My
victim shook his head. “No.” His mouth moved slowly, as if testing out the
word. “I don’t feel…bad.”

“Are
you sure?” I was leaning forward now, hands clenched in my lap.

“I
don’t know.” The words were mumbled, like he’d just woken up…which he kind of
had.

The
guy stared blankly at his legs, and I felt the chilly air condense. “Do you
feel confused?” I tried. “Like, dizzy?”

His
eyes lifted. They were darker and more guarded than before.

“It’s
okay,” I told him. “Tell me what’s wrong. I’m pretty good at medical stuff
and—”

He
shook his head. Like I was a fly buzzing in his ear. Then, without warning, he
lumbered up.

He’d
seemed tall all sprawled out, but at his full height, he looked even taller:
easily above six feet. There was something about him that brought to mind James
Dean—all swarthy and mussed, like he’d just rolled out of bed and was spoiling
for a fight.

I
jumped up, too. One minute, I was racking my brain for what to do. The next, he
was walking—well, weaving—along the creek.

“Hey,
wait! Hold on a second!”

But
he wasn’t holding on for anybody. He jabbed his hands into his pants pockets
and shouldered through the firs, moving with surprising coordination for
someone who’d just been sedated.

It
felt like forever that I chased him, his big, dark form the center of my world.
If I couldn’t catch him, what would I do? What
had
I done?

A
few strides later it didn’t matter.
He sighted the pancake
rock and froze mid-step. Then
h
e turned a slow circle,
his face a mask of baffled disbelief. He raised his arms, turning his palms
out, toward me.

                       
“Where
am I,” he asked flatly, “and what the hell am I doing here?”

CHAPTER
THREE

I
wanted to believe his question was rhetorical. Philosophical. Where am I
metaphorically
and what am I doing
with my life
.

But
his brown eyes flashed with barely restrained panic.

“What
are you doing here,” I repeated, to his frozen face. “You mean…like…how did you
get here?”

I
prayed he’d beam me one of those thousand-watt smiles. Then he would turn
another circle in the field, fix his eyes on the Simpsons’ house, a small white
dot in the distance, and say, “Okay! I remember now. I was leaving my aunt and
uncle’s house—you know them, right? The Simpsons— And I’m on my way to the
Saturday Morning Prom. I had to walk to that road out there—” which would be
Mitchell Road— “to meet my friend Paul. He’s picking me up, and then we’re
going to get our dates for brunch.”

Instead
he whirled around, his back to me, and I watched his shoulders rise and fall; I
could hear his fast and shallow breaths.

Oh, no.

I
had stun-gunned some impeccably dressed guy and now his brain was scrambled.
What was I going to tell my mom? What would I tell the Golden Police?

The
thought of the cops made me cold with fear. I’d been in fourth period last
November when our school had been the target of a drug bust, and I could still
remember the police whistles, the snarling German Shepherds that looked like
they wanted to chew off my fingers.

If
the police found out what I had done…

If
the people at my school found out…

Oh, no.
No one was finding
out. I could handle this. I’d handled lots of other things, hadn’t I? Many of
them were things I didn’t want to think about, but still, I’d handled them.
You’re too old for your age, my dear.
Isn’t that what my Grandma Lisa had said just a few months ago?

My
brain switched to fast-forward mode. I stared at my victim, feeling an awful
swell of regret that I quashed with my resolve. I could fix this. I could fix
him.

My
arm swung up, my hand closed over his thick, woolen shoulder.

There
was a moment of quiet where he looked pale and unsteady, and my fingers itched
to brush those half-curls off his forehead.

Despite
my pounding heart, I forced my voice to come out strong. “We’re outside Golden,
Colorado. This is my family’s land. See those?” I turned and pointed to the
turbines: enormous things like malevolent pin-wheels with three knife arms,
perched on the edge of the Front Range. Strangely, they didn’t seem to be
spinning and I couldn’t hear their usual faint hum.

“Those
are our turbines,” I told him calmly. “This—well,
that
is Mitchell Windfarms.”

I
watched his stark face. His eyes slid to the turbines, back to me.

“I’m
sorry.
So
sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you. I don’t know how I did.” The
state of things was fairly clear, but in my shock I needed clarification.
“You’re saying you don’t remember…anything?”

His
gaze cut left, then right. I waited half a breath, and when he didn’t move I
shifted forward, standing close enough to see the throbbing of his heart beat
at his throat. “So... Come with me to my house. We’ll figure it out. I can get
you something to eat. I can look at the gun’s manual, and we can figure out
what to do to help you—” Help him
what
?
“To help you remember what’s the what,” I finished lamely.